Night Hawks Tapes

• In an economy based on bits, immediacy becomes a key driver and variable in economic activity and business success.
Product life cycles are cratering. In 1990, automobiles took six years from concept to production. Today they take two years. Hewlett-Packard’s Computer Systems Organization chief Wim Roelandts says that these days most of HP’s revenues come from products that didn’t exist a year ago. In the old economy, an invention (like the Polaroid camera, xerography) ensured a revenue stream for decades. Today, consumer electronics products have a typical lifespan of two months
The new enterprise is a real time enterprise, which is continuously and immediately adjusting to changing business conditions through information immediacy. Goods are received from suppliers and products shipped to customers “just in time,” thus reducing or eliminating the warehousing function and allowing enterprises to shift from mass production to custom on-line production. Customer orders arrive electronically and are instantly processed; corresponding invoices are sent electronically and databases are updated Enterprises seek to “compete in time” effectively.
Electronic data interchange (EDt) is a powerful, if badly misunderstood, example of how the I-Way is creating information immediacy.’1 Advocates of EDI argue that by linking computer systems between suppliers and their customers for purchase orders, invoices, billing, and record keeping, companies can save considerably over manual (nondigital) methods. In fact, EDI goes well beyond those possibilities. It’s just the first splash in a tidal wave of electronic commerce that will shift the metabolism of business to real time and in so doing forever change the relationship between companies.